It is known that consumption articles, such as rolls of toilet paper or kitchen towels are usually packaged in packs or groups by a film or plastic transparent material, e.g. polyethylene, polythene, polypropylene, etc.
At present, the articles are packaged by machines, which form groups of articles, usually in a loading or collecting tray, and which push the grouped articles upwards by means of a raising plate, against a sheet of plastic material, which is kept spread over the plate.
The group of articles is introduced into a space, which is formed by fixed walls and which those skilled in the art call a “hopper”.
Thus, the sheet of plastic material wraps the upper surface of the so grouped articles.
In phase relation with the raising plate downward return movement, the sheet is tucked in against the lower surface of the group of articles by two movable horizontal plates.
Then, a conveyor, equipped with vertical arms, moves the group of articles wrapped with the sheet of plastic material toward a welding station, where the package is closed by welding the overlapped edges of the sheet of plastic material, on the lower surface of the grouped articles.
The above solution is undoubtedly complicated due to the necessity to foresee different changes of the groups of articles movement, which results in high construction costs.
Moreover, it is also obvious that each change of the direction requires a stop for a group of articles.
The time intervals necessary for different stops accumulate, due to a high number of packages being produced and consequently, the total stop time becomes significant.
In addition to the technical and production considerations presented previously, the currently used constructive solutions feature another drawback which lies in the closure welding, which must be made on one of the biggest surfaces of the packages or groups of packaged articles.
Considering its upward movement, the just formed group of articles hits the sheet of plastic packaging material with its larger surface and the sheet is tucked on the opposite surface by overlapping and welding the edges thereof.
This reduces the possibility to use the entire surface, limited by the welding, for printing commercial advertisements or other kinds of information.